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MASH MY WEEK! Summary of the outstanding Internet, Technology and Social Media news for the week 16-21 January

In this edition of Mash My Week! we introduce you to Facebook’s new applications for your status updates . We’ll also be talking about the new interactive books for iPad and the new platform Apple has launched to create them. Finally, we announce the YouTube Film Festival organized by the video portal. We await your comments!

Facebook applications

After the recent renewal of its interface, the social network incorporates applications enabling maximum interaction among users.

The applications for the biography have been developed so that they can be integrated into Facebook users’ profiles and enable them to describe multiple actions in their status updates. Users will no longer be limited to the classic “I Like” to share content; they will now be able to tell their contacts what they’re listening to, cooking or reading. The activity will be published in the News Feed section. I recommend you revise your profile privacy configuration to avoid the information being visible to other users of the application or the website.

“Our vision for Timeline is that users can add whatever they like or whatever story they want to tell or share,” said Carl Sjogreen, director of product management at Facebook.

Apple has unveiled its new digital textbook service for iPad. Textbooks can be created for the iBooks shop with the iBooks Author program, which permits the simple and intuitive creation of interactive books.

Another company that is offering interactive books for iPad at the moment is Inkling, which also has an application to generate this kind of content available on iTunes.

Other platforms like iTunes U and Textbooks have already had a lot of success in the academic world and also with publishers. The iBooks application is supported by various academic publishers such as Oxford, Duke and Yale, among others.

YouTube launches first online film festival

The world’s most popular video portal has decided to organize its own film festival. The event will be called “Your Film Festival”. Those wishing to participate should submit short films up to fifteen minutes long between February 2 and March 31. Fifty shorts will be chosen to form part of the special YouTube channel where users will be able to choose their favourites. Entrants will compete to be among the ten finalists who will travel to the Venice Film Festival, where their work will be shown.

“Through this special programme, YouTube will give filmmakers the opportunity to reach a vast audience, screen their work during the Venice Film Festival, and potentially be rewarded in a career-changing way,” said Robert Kyncl, global head of content at YouTube. Through this initiative, YouTube seeks to promote the work of young filmmakers and producers.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this edition of Mash My Week! See you next time!